COMPUTER THROWAWAYS SWAMPING US BIT BY BIT

Come Christmas morning, millions of Americans will take the wrappings off spanking new, faster-than-ever personal computers, fancy fax machines, electronic game stations, cell phones and all manner of high-tech toys.

For many people, these will be updated versions of equipment they already have, and before Christmas dinner hits the table the old PCs and other devices will be unplugged and piled in the corner, more fast-forming fossils of the Digital Age.

This is a major problem in the U.S. Tons and tons of high-tech junk--some experts say 75 percent of all the high-tech equipment made in the last 10 years--are piling up in landfills, attics and basements.

There has been no efficient way to dispose of most old electronic equipment, but efforts are under way to capture and recycle old computers and other electronic gear.

Old computer systems are being updated and resold; others are dismantled and some of the metals and plastics recycled. Some firms have begun to offer simple ways to upgrade older PCs, and others are working to develop new technology that is easily updated or taken apart and recycled.

Technical innovation and improvement drives the increasingly rapid obsolescence of PCs and other electronic gear. Some experts estimate that a new personal computer purchased this Christmas will be overtaken by improved technology within 18 months.

"We are getting better at making machines that last longer and longer, but because technology is moving so fast, they become obsolete long before they wear out," said Nabil Nasar, director of the National Center for Remanufacturing and Resource Recovery at the Rochester (N.Y.) Institute of Technology.

"This is a serious problem," he said. "There are a lot of products not only creating a problem with pollution, but you're also taking up lots of natural resources."

Lead is embedded in the glass of computer monitors to protect users from harmful radiation. Central processing units, which contain the processing chip and disk drives, have traces of toxic chemicals including mercury and chromium.

While some equipment can be donated to schools and charitable organizations, technology is advancing so quickly that even non-profit organizations are spurning offers of older computers.

The ripple effect of the digital revolution has washed up in the Columbia, S.C., home of Susan Nicolai.

"My husband lugs home old used computers from the office as they update," she said. "My home is becoming a stockpile of hard drives and monitors that don't work."

As Christmas 1999 nears, the Nicolai house has a dozen hard drives, seven monitors and scores of peripherals.

"It all dates back to a Mac (Apple) II that we took out a $6,000 loan to buy, which at that time was more than we had invested in either of our vehicles. We are moving into a new house in the next few months. I really don't know what I'm going to be able to do with the stuff."

Old computers and other electronic equipment are accumulating in such quantities that it is hard to estimate accurately.

"It is huge," Julie Ann Stewart, a professor at Ohio State University, said of the amount of techno-junk. She said it was really impossible to come up with a figure because the vast majority of the old equipment is sitting in people's homes. She also said huge quantities of obsolete electronic gear has piled up in government warehouses.

According to a National Safety Council estimate made in June, only 11 percent of the personal computer processors that became obsolete in 1998 were recycled and, by 2002, about 3.4 million more PCs will become obsolete than will be shipped by manufacturers.

A growing number of companies are buying old computer equipment, primarily from businesses that replace technology every year or two, and upgrading the gear or refurbishing it and reselling to people and companies that do not need the latest thing.

"The market itself is going to grow because people are becoming more aware of the possibilities to refresh older equipment," said Michael Ross, an executive vice president of Comdisco Inc., a technical services company based in Rosemont, Ill.

Like other companies around the country, Comdisco takes older computers with 133 megahertz and 166 megahertz processing chips, installs faster processors and then sells those machines into a secondary market.

While he would not be specific about how much money Comdisco earns on selling upgraded machines, Ross said the business adds up to "tens of millions" of dollars.

In January a company called Powerleap Inc. will start selling motherboards, the heart of a computer, that can be plugged into older computers to bring them up to present standards of processing speed, greater memory, larger hard drives and the latest in audio-visual performance.

For less than $400, an old, sluggish antique can become a 500 megahertz machine with 128 megs of memory.

But recycling computer parts remains very difficult in part because there is no readily available system for scrapping old machines.

"Taking them apart and re-using the components is hugely complicated and expensive," Ohio State's Stewart said.

Stewart and Nasar are involved in designing high-tech products to make them easier to recycle and more environmentally friendly, a field referred to as "industrial ecology"

Nasar said he worked on a project with Xerox that led to what he said was the world's first totally recyclable copying machine.

He said Kodak used careful design when preparing its latest disposable camera. Kodak one-use cameras are totally recyclable, with some components used as many as nine times before being discarded, Nasar said.

Part of the problem with recycling most modern electronic equipment is the nearly universal practice of using components that are practically impossible to take apart without damaging the machines.

As part of her research into new designs, Stewart is looking into a retro-technology.